


The Lost Syllable

by nicasio_silang



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: F/M, Smoking, gen in disguise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-30
Updated: 2012-10-30
Packaged: 2017-11-17 09:16:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicasio_silang/pseuds/nicasio_silang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan in the morning smelling like your soap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lost Syllable

Joan in the morning smelling like your soap. She brought her own, but she’s using yours. Your soap is horrible, broken into pieces and you press the pieces into your skin, hard little nubs, clear yellow, leave your skin sucked dry and rough, Joan’s skin perhaps dry and rough in the morning from using your soap. Joan in the morning smelling like your soap, the steamed bathroom smelling like Joan.

The things she chooses to communicate: her schedule, your schedule, the division of household tasks, suggestions to stimulate, suggestions to de-escalate, true patter. The things she keeps to herself: any desires at all. The bare slats of the floor, subsuming her life to her work, you, are her penance. Not for the dead man, men die in hospitals every day. There’s something else she’s cut from herself, sliced it neatly and left herself clean, palatable, you’re sure she imagines. Of course, willful denial of vice can be as lovely as the pinch of the needle itself. Buying expensive soap, picking it up, smelling it, then using his.

There is no hidden liquor in the house, Joan isn’t the sort, but there are cigarettes behind the salt in the kitchen cabinet. She thinks you never cook. She’s right, but you use the Ziplock bags to file soil samples. In the early morning you’re cleaning your shoes and finding an unopened, duty free-bought carton of Silk Cut purple 100s. Two weeks ago, Joan holding her phone upright, tapping on the top with two fingers of the opposite hand. Over and over, Joan patting down all her pockets. So you knew, but this is an interesting detail. You liberate a pack and take it to the front stoop. 

Joan, back from the pharmacy with her prescriptions, a bag of peppermints, and studied lack of surprise. 

“Cooking?” she asks.

“Working.”

She takes the cigarette from you, holds it for too long, drops and crushes it. She sits very nearby and offers you a mint. Sitting so near, you can smell your soap, and, you presume, she can smell her cigarettes seeping into your sweater, the both of you tasting peppermint.


End file.
